Sheaffer Gad writes:> Using the same indexing method as TIN, it will embed a link into> the end of each article that will point to the next one in the> thread, in addition to links in the beginning of the article> that point to the previous article in the thread and to the> start of the thread.> > Also having a menu of threads instead of a menu of postings at> the news group entrance, makes the menu more compact and the> access more convenient.

Good idea! I can't wait to see your code... :-).

(I agree that TIN is the best newsreader I've seen so far in terms of
threading, etc. -- would be a good place to steal code from, if it's
legal.)

> 2 - The newsreader part should in my opinion be part of WWW, not the browser.> That way the effort will not be duplicated in each and every> browser. In the same way that WWW uses gophers and WAIS servers,> it can use distributed news servers, that know how to feed it> hypertext.

Except these hypertext news servers don't exist yet. Again, can't
wait to see the code... (also, would be a pain in the butt to get the
current NNTP servers moved over to the new code -- probably better to
just rely on existing servers until the whole news population moves to
the next level of functionality -- and who knows, maybe that will be
hypertext).

> 3 - Is there a way to read news groups not carried locally via the WWW ?> We have here a rather limited selection on newsgroups (only 1500> or so :-) Some people are not that fortunate, and I know of many> groups we do not carry either. Additionally, postings are kept> here only for about 3 days.> > So - how about a facility to read news at the source?

Well, there's no such thing even in the news world itself, so I don't
know how we can do any better...

> 4 - At least in viola there is no way to save locally a news article, thread> or any remote file (sort of FTP it over). How about other> browsers ?

Mosaic lets you save/mail/print the current document (article), in
HTML, plaintext, or formatted text. I'm not up to date on the other
browsers anymore.

Cheers,
Marc

--
Marc Andreessen
Software Development Group
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu